characterizing the importance of carbon stored in wood ... · carbon-neutral. carbon that is...

CHARACTERIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF CARBON STORED IN

WOOD PRODUCTS

Bruce Lippke*{Professor and Director

Rural Technology Initiative

College of Forest Resources

University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98195

Jim Wilson{Professor Emeritus

Department of Wood Science and Engineering

Oregon State University

Corvallis, OR 97331

Jamie MeilDirector

Athena Sustainable Materials Institute

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Adam TaylorAssistant Professor

Extension–Forestry, Wildlife and Fisheries

University of Tennessee

Knoxville, TN 37996

(Received August 2009)

Abstract. Carbon emissions and stores are increasingly important as solutions are sought to address

climate change. Focusing on some forest-related carbon pools but omitting product carbon frequently

results in invalid conclusions. This study examined carbon emissions and stores in the life cycle of wood

products in comparison with alternative materials. Emissions were established from a sustainably man-

aged, carbon-neutral forest through processing to wood product use in residential structures and their

eventual disposal. A life-cycle inventory was developed to establish the quantity of emissions from each

stage of processing, and a life-cycle assessment of a representative residential building was made of its

impact on global warming potential. The carbon stored in wood products as an offset to emissions was

shown to be significant. Comparison of various building materials—wood, steel, and concrete—showed

that wood was more environmentally friendly because of reduced carbon emissions because of fossil fuel

combustion, carbon stored in products, permanent avoidance of emissions from fossil fuel-intensive

products, and use of a sustainable and renewable resource.

Keywords: Carbon emissions, carbon storage, global warming, wood products, forests, life-cycle

inventory and assessment (LCI/LCA).

INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade, the Consortium for Researchon Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM

2005) has researched life-cycle inventory (LCI)and life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods fortracking inputs and outputs across every stageof wood processing and its use as a way tomeasure environmental burdens. LCIs devel-oped by CORRIM for structural wood productshas conformed to rigorous research guidelines

* Corresponding author: [email protected]{ SWST member

Wood and Fiber Science, 42(CORRIM Special Issue), 2010, pp. 5–14# 2010 by the Society of Wood Science and Technology

(Briggs 2001), including measures of every inputand output per unit of product and coproduct foreach structural wood production process (ie inputsof materials, energy, water, and land use and out-put emissions to air, water, and land per productand coproduct produced). The initial protocoladopted for the emissions from manufacturingactivities was to provide a common frame of ref-erence across wood and nonwood material proc-esses and thus did not include the carbon that isstored in wood products as an offset (negative)emission. This separation in accounting has led toerrors by users as they compare the carbon emis-sions from the manufacture of wood productsdirectly with the carbon emissions from the man-ufacture of fossil fuel-intensive products withoutnoting the substantial carbon that is stored inwood products. CORRIM has now changed thatprotocol to show that the carbon stored in productsis functionally equivalent to a negative carbonemission produced in the manufacture of thoseproducts (Puettmann et al 2010). The impacts aresubstantial and are detailed here for each stage ofprocessing as well as analyzed for their integratedimpact across forest, product, and product dis-placement carbon pools. Carbon pools includeboth carbon stores (the forest and wood products)as well as carbon offsets (displaced fossil fuelemissions from burning biomass for energy anddisplaced emissions from substituting wood prod-ucts for fossil fuel-intensive products).

It is important to begin with a definition of sus-tainable forestry. In sustainable forests, removalsplus decomposition of dead and dying residualsdo not exceed growth from one rotation to thenext. Hence, forest carbon across a sustainablymanaged forest is stable over time, ie remainscarbon-neutral. Carbon that is released throughthe decomposition of slash or dead trees afterharvest, plus the carbon in logs that are processedin mills, is offset by the forest uptake of carbondioxide through new growth over time in a sus-tainably managed forest.

The carbon that is exported from the forest andremains in products can be considered an addi-tion to the carbon stored in the forest. Unlike theforest carbon stock, which remains stable, the

carbon stored in products continues to increasewith every harvest and is an increasing stock ofcarbon that is reduced only by the product vol-umes that have reached the end of their usefullife. When products reach the end of their usefullife, they may be recycled (extending their life),reclaimed for energy (displacing fossil energyemissions), decomposed quickly by burning aswaste, or landfilled, resulting in a slow decom-position process. Because the products in build-ings have lives of 80 yr or more (Winistorferet al 2005), the cumulative carbon stored inthese products is a significant store of carbon.

When measuring carbon in the forest, the usualconvention is to measure carbon in units ofC (reflecting a store of carbon). Once outsidethe forest, the focus is generally on greenhousegas emissions (a loss in stored C) and this isexpressed in units of CO2 with a molecularweight conversion of 44/12 that of C. The CO2

taken from the atmosphere by forest growth cre-ates a new store of C, but in a sustainably man-aged forest, this will be balanced by the transferof C to products and the decomposition of anydead wood left behind.

The transfer of C from the forest to products is anegative emission relative to the positive emis-sions from the processing energy required toproduce the products and hence becomes an off-set against other carbon emissions during theproduct life cycle. Emissions are assigned basedon mass allocation to the various products andcoproducts, including biofuels.

To establish the importance of carbon storage inwood products, we start by showing the energyinvolved in producing structural wood productsand their carbon emissions. We then add back thecarbon stored in wood products and comparethe results with nonwood substitutes. We showthese impacts at the product level followedby the impact on completed houses comparingthe use of different framing materials. Finally,we show the integration of all carbon pools backto the raw material source (a unit of forest withforest carbon, short- and long-lived productscarbon, bioenergy displacement, and displacement

6 WOOD AND FIBER SCIENCE, MARCH 2010, V. 42(CORRIM SPECIAL ISSUE)

from product substitution) for conservative end-of-life assumptions before summarizing the im-portance of these observations.

ENERGY REQUIRED AND EMISSIONS

PRODUCED IN PROCESSING

Energy Used by Stages of Processing

Based on the stage of processing survey data col-lected by CORRIM for forest management andprocessing into structural materials (Johnson et al2005; Kline 2005; Milota et al 2005; Puettmannand Wilson 2005; Wilson and Sakimoto 2005),Fig 1 shows the LCI measure of total energyrequired to produce various wood products fromresources in the forest. Green lumber is the onlyproduct in which the processing energy does notcompletely dwarf the energy used in harvestingand transportation. The energy includes that forall fuels, including wood and feedstock; for resinsfrom in-ground resources through extraction,processing, delivery, and combustion; and theenergy used to produce electricity (Puettmannand Wilson 2005). Products that are dried and/or use resins such as plywood and orientedstrandboard (OSB) require more energy but much

of the drying energy is supplied by biofuels (barkand mill residues).

Carbon Dioxide Emissions and

Carbon Storage

Figure 2 shows the carbon emissions for threeof the more common wood products, in whichthe emissions produced by biofuels are offset byan equivalent amount of carbon removed fromthe atmosphere by forest growth. The use ofbiofuel and the storage of carbon in productsis a unique attribute of renewable, bio-based re-sources. To understand the importance of theseattributes relative to alternative materials, weuse similar LCI measures for nonwood materials.The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL)and its partners created the USLCI Database(NREL 2003) to help LCA experts answer ques-tions about environmental impacts. This databaseprovides an accounting of all the energy sourcesand material flows that are associated with pro-ducing primary products from raw materials. TheLCI profiles for primary products can then in turnbe used to construct the LCI measures for com-ponents or assemblies based on the LCI measuresfor their bill of materials. The database provides

Figure 1. Total energy use, from in-ground resources

through production, of structural wood materials for the

average of southeast (SE) and northwest (NW) mills. LVL

is laminated veneer lumber, glulam is laminated timber, and

lumber is either kiln dried (KD) or green (GR). From

Puettmann and Wilson (2005).

Figure 2. Carbon emissions (as CO2 equivalents) of a

wood floor, from in-ground resources through product

manufacturing, compared with a concrete floor of the same

area. From Puettmann and Wilson (2005) and Lippke and

Edmonds (2006) based on ATHENA EIE analysis of differ-

ent flooring materials.

Lippke et al—CHARACTERIZING CARBON STORED IN WOOD PRODUCTS 7

an online storeroom of data collected on com-monly used wood and nonwood materials, prod-ucts, and processes. The critically reviewed LCIdatabase procedures (NREL 2004) are consistentacross all materials based on a common researchprotocol with international standards.

In comparison with the carbon impact from thethree common wood products in Fig 2, theequivalent emissions from producing a concreteslab floor of the same area as can be producedby a cubic meter of wood is also shown. Theprocessing emissions from the concrete floorare roughly four times greater than for woodfloor options. All source data are available fromthe USLCI database managed by NREL. Thecradle-to-production gate LCI data for woodproducts in the all-products USLCI databasewere produced by CORRIM (Puettmann andWilson 2005) and input to the USLCI database.The data for a concrete slab floor were usedin the ATHENA Environmental Impact Estima-tor (EIE) to construct a floor area equivalentto a wood floor from 1 m3 of wood products(ATHENA 2004). It is important that compari-sons across materials are made for functionallyequivalent uses because the weight of differentmaterials can vary substantially for equal func-tional use.

The carbon emissions generated from the useof biofuel reduces the carbon storage potentialthat was available in the harvested log, but thecarbon in the products more than offsets theemissions from processing energy, as shown inFig 3. Included in this offset is that the carbonstore in wood fuels is equivalent to the CO2

emissions because of its combustion. The woodproducts in a wood floor store about as muchcarbon over their life cycle as is emitted fromconstructing a concrete floor (including cradle-to-construction gate emissions). The construc-tion of the wood floor stores carbon for thelife of the product and avoids fossil fuel-relatedcarbon emissions that would be produced byconstructing the more energy-intensive con-crete floor. It also offsets much of the emissionsfrom the construction of concrete foundationsin which wood and concrete are used as com-

plements rather than substitute products. As thequality of the USLCI database improves, somereduction in carbon emissions over the life ofthe concrete product should be expected givensome absorption of CO2 in concrete over time.

At the end of their useful product lives, if thewood products are recycled for their energyvalue as fuel, the carbon offset becomes essen-tially permanent because it displaces the emis-sions that would have otherwise been generatedfrom burning coal or other fossil fuels for thatenergy. If the wood is recycled, using the wasteas a raw material for products like fiberboard,the useful life is extended. If the used wood pro-ducts are landfilled, they will decompose slowly,extending the carbon storage period beyond theuseful life of the product (but not indefinitely).Whereas this comparison is limited to a cradleto end-of-product-life analysis, the expected lifeof the buildings in which products are usedis very long and the impacts of building main-tenance are generally small (Winistorfer et al2005). Postproduct life impacts involve a trans-fer of product carbon to many different possiblealternatives, much like the transfer of forest car-bon to products carbon, and will be consideredas a last step when integrating the impact of allproduct carbon pools.

Figure 3. Net carbon emissions, including stored carbon,

of a wood floor compared with a concrete floor of the same

area. Based on stored product carbon CO2 equivalent calcu-

lated at 1.83 times the dry wood mass.


GLOBAL WARMING POTENTIAL IMPACTED BY

PRODUCT CARBON

The Impact of Product Carbon on

Residential Buildings

The impact of product selection on the totalemissions from resource extraction through pro-cessing (Lippke et al 2004) as well as the impactof carbon storage in the products used to build acomplete house is shown in Fig 4 for virtualhouses framed in steel or wood for Minneapolisbuilding codes (cold climate) and concrete orwood wall framing in an Atlanta house (a warmclimate). The ATHENA EIE was used to de-velop the bill of materials linked to their LCIburdens for comparable virtual houses differen-tiated by the choice of materials used for fram-ing. The Minneapolis house uses 2 � 6 woodwall studs or 2 � 4 steel studs with vinyl clad-ding and steel or wood floor joists. The Atlantahouse uses wood stud walls with vinyl siding orconcrete block covered with stucco for wallframing and a concrete slab floor. Each structureused a wood-framed roof with asphalt shingles.

Although the carbon substitution impact of asingle wood product vs a nonwood product was

shown to be potentially very high, as in thesubstitution for a concrete floor in Fig 2, chang-ing the wall framing from wood to steel for thecomplete house reduces total wood use by onlyabout 7% of the mass of the house. The vastmajority of materials used is common to bothdesigns. Despite this small total mass difference,the Global Warming Potential emissions (mea-sured as CO2 equivalents including CO2, meth-ane, and nitrous oxide) from the steel-framedhouse was 26% greater than the house withwood-framed walls and floors (Lippke et al2004) without considering the carbon stored inwood products. This becomes a 120% differencewhen the carbon stored in the wood products forthe life of the house is included. Emissions fromthe completed, concrete wall-framed house were31% greater than the wood-wall house withoutconsidering the carbon stored in wood productsand are 156% greater when these carbon storesare included in the calculation.

Using more wood in construction has the po-tential to store more carbon in the buildingmaterials than is emitted, ie better-than-carbon-neutral construction is possible. The carbon storedin products is not permanent, but the carbon offset

Figure 4. Global Warming Potential carbon equivalent emissions through residential construction for steel and concrete

frame vs wood frame ignoring and including the carbon stored in wood products. Based on stored product carbon CO2

equivalent calculated at 1.83 times the dry wood mass.


may become permanent by recycling or the col-lection of the discarded wood for biofuel proc-essing or may appear nearly permanent with theslow decay in a modern landfill relative to the100-yr accounting period used by some regis-tries. The carbon emissions displaced by usingwood instead of fossil fuel-intensive products ispermanent from the time of initial substitution.

Carbon Emissions Across the Forest and

Products Pools

Although the LCI for each stage of wood proc-essing are derived as cross-sectional snapshotsof a point in time, when considered as a series ofepochs over time, they can be used to link theproduct impacts back to each unit of forest(Bowyer et al 2004). Figure 5, a version of theforest and product carbon pools resulting fromsustainably managing a single forest unit devel-oped by Perez-Garcia et al (2005), illustrates theexport of the carbon at harvest to long- andshort-lived product pools with the emissionsassociated with harvesting and processing as anegative carbon pool. This shift of focus to ahectare of managed forest demonstrates the inte-gration of both forest and product carbon. The

product pools characterized for representativeresidential structures are scaled to the amountof product carbon resulting from the manage-ment of a hectare of forest.

The total processing energy emissions shown aslosses of carbon after each harvest are shown atthe bottom of the figure and are offset partiallyby the energy from using wood processing resi-dues as a fuel source (shown as the top carbonpool in the graph). The figure assumes that thelong-lived products are burned at the end of thelife of a house (shown at 80 yr for tutorial pur-poses), although they may last much longer byrecycling or even disposal in a landfill. Short-lived products (paper or fiberboards made fromchips and residuals) are shown to decomposerapidly. Assessments on the life of pulp or fiber-board products through recycling and the landfillare lacking. Similarly, forest residuals left afterharvest decompose quickly (shown in black).Some of these short-lived products, when used inflooring and furniture, have intermediate life-spans and could also be recycled, thus increasingtheir contribution to carbon stores. These assump-tions intentionally provide a conservative esti-mate for integrated carbon pools.

Figure 5. Carbon pools from a sustainably managed forest and its wood products, including biofuel displacement, under

conservative end of life assumptions. From Perez-Garcia et al (2005).


More detailed treatment of the carbon storedbeyond a product’s life requires redistributingthe end-of-life product carbon among 1) recy-cling pools that extend the carbon storage indef-initely; 2) demolition and burning resulting inan immediate carbon release; 3) demolition andcollection for energy production that permanentlyoffsets fossil fuel emissions; and 4) landfillingthat results in a complex decomposition processwith half of the biomass not decomposing and theother half contributing to methane emissions ifthe landfill is not equipped to capture the methane(Skog 2008). Any landfills that release methaneoffset some of the benefit of the carbon stored inthe landfill.

Unfortunately, the precision of estimates forimpacts beyond end-of-product life are of a dif-ferent character than for the CORRIM productlife-cycle data. Landfill emissions are analyzedacross inputs with many different ages, unlikeproduct LCIs. Also, with substantial technologicimprovements in recycling and landfill man-agement already underway such as recapturingmethane releases, a reduction in landfill emis-sions is anticipated. Depending on assumptionson product life, estimates have shown landfillcarbon reaching 40% of the carbon stored inproducts with the methane emissions offsetting50% of the landfill carbon store over 100 yrs(Upton et al 2008). Thus, the beyond-product-life product carbon pool decreases slowly but,at the same time, the product supply from theforest replaces the products with sustainable har-vests such that each hectare of forest contributesto both the products pools and postproduct lifepools, increasing sustainably. Although it isessential to understand the impact of productscarbon, ultimately it is the resource supply thatdrives the sustainable growth and cumulativeimpact.

Looking across the forest and product carbonpools, it should be noted that the early decom-position of the short-lived product uses anddecaying forest residuals results in a net declinein total carbon stores after harvest before in-creasing over subsequent harvest rotations. Thetotal carbon in forest, product, and fossil-fuel

displacement pools grows over time, unlike theforest pool, which remains neutral over the longterm. Although Fig 5 shows the use of woodresiduals for fuel as a permanent displacementof fossil-fuel energy emissions, it does not yetshow the impact of the wood being used displac-ing the emissions from substitute materials whenwood products are not used.

WOOD PRODUCT SUBSTITUTION FOR FOSSIL

FUEL-INTENSIVE PRODUCTS

When wood is not used, alternatives are substi-tuted. Wood framing can be replaced by steel orconcrete, wood siding by vinyl, cellulose insula-tion by fiberglass or polystyrene insulation,wood panels by gypsum board, etc. Each substi-tute material results in a different emission pro-file. Generally, nonwood substitutes are severaltimes more fossil fuel-intensive to produce anddo not provide the carbon storage offset that isfound in wood products.

Because the substitution of wood products forfossil fuel-intensive structural products has ahigher “carbon leverage” than any other use ofwood, it offers the greatest potential for globalclimate change mitigation. Substitution for woodproducts by fossil fuel-intensive products hastaken place in the historical context of lowfossil-fuel prices. As fossil-fuel prices or carboncredit trading values rise, we can anticipate theincreased substitution of wood products for themost fossil fuel-intensive products.

The most frequent form of wood substitution is theuse of concrete instead of wood. Figure 6 (Perez-Garcia et al 2005) includes the substitution impacton carbon emissions of substituting concrete blockand stucco-walled houses with wood-framed andvinyl-sided houses. The combined forest and prod-uct carbon pools and displaced fossil fuel-carbonemission pools when substituting wood for con-crete (or steel) grow continuously.

As the value of carbon rises with policy changesdesigned to reduce emissions, there will begreater motivation to substitute wood for themost fossil fuel-intensive products. At the end


of the useful life for wood products, there willbe increased efforts to collect the wood forrecycled products or for its energy value. Unlikeearlier times, the value of the carbon offset inforest residuals (that are now left in the forest todecompose) may pay their way to energy collec-tion facilities. Each of these impacts will raisethe slope (eg growth rate) of the combined totalof carbon pools. As a consequence, Fig 6 dem-onstrates sustainable forest management withincreasing carbon stored in products as a sus-tainable economic contribution and increasingdisplacement of carbon emissions as a sustain-able environmental contribution. Concerns overlack of permanence in product carbon are allayedwhen the focus is shifted from individual prod-ucts to the stream of products being produced bya sustainably managed forest.

Many More Uses of Wood

Although wood is the dominant framing materialin North American residential building construc-tion, there are many ways wood could see greateruse in both residential and nonresidential struc-tures. Figure 7 provides direct carbon emissioncomparisons for wood vs steel wall studs and themore complex substitution of wood studs with

OSB sheathing and vinyl siding compared withconcrete block and stucco.

The direct substitution of steel for wood studsresults in almost 6 tonne of extra emissions,although wood studs store more than 6 tonneCO2 equivalent. The steel studs also requireextra insulation to have thermal equivalence(not shown), which would increase steel wallemissions. The more complex concrete blocksubstitution emits almost 11 tonne of emissions,whereas the wood wall, even with vinyl siding,

Figure 6. Carbon pools from a sustainably managed forest and its wood products, including biofuel displacement and

product-substitution displacement. From Perez-Garcia et al (2005).

Figure 7. Impact of product carbon store on emissions for

wall products and assemblies.


stores almost 2 tonne equivalent (the wood stor-age more than offsets the vinyl emissions).

Comparisons of siding and sheathing are shownin Fig 8. Whereas OSB is more energy-intensiveto manufacture, its greater density stores morecarbon, offsetting much of the energy used.Wood panels store carbon, whereas vinyl sidingand gypsum are emitters. The recycled fiberpaper coating on gypsum, although of little mass,could be credited with the carbon in the papervs landfilling after the first cycle (not shown).Fiberglass also contributes to emissions, whereasthe emissions from the production of cellulosicinsulation is very low and would be largely offsetby the extended carbon stored in the productrelative to rapid decomposition if landfilled afterthe first life cycle (not shown).

CONCLUSIONS

LCA assessment helps to characterize the oppor-tunities for reducing emissions of carbon to theatmosphere. Life-cycle methods also allow forthe evaluation of other environmental burdenssuch as air and water pollution, solid waste, andecosystem impacts. The manufacture of woodproducts results in low emissions compared withother materials and carbon emissions can belowered further by the increased use of biofuels.In addition, the carbon stored in wood productsis substantially greater than the emissions fromtheir initial manufacture. That surplus offsets

much of the emissions from the nonwood prod-ucts that are used along with wood in theconstruction in typical residential structures.Designs that use more wood should be able tooffset all the emissions from the nonwood prod-ucts that may be required, resulting in “carbon-negative” structures. Looking only at current lowlevels of substitution associated with framing,and not including the carbon stored in products,hides the many opportunities that exist for reduc-ing carbon emissions from building construction.When the carbon impacts in construction areintegrated back to the forest hectare, they providea convincing characterization of sustainable for-est management that includes the harvest and useof wood products to extend the carbon stored inthe forest to all the wood uses in society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research project would not have been pos-sible without the financial and technical as-sistance provided by the USDA Forest ServiceForest Products Laboratory (contract 04-CA-11111137-094), CORRIM’s university member-ship, and the contribution of many companies.Any opinions findings, conclusions, or recom-mendations expressed in this article are those ofthe authors and do not necessarily reflect theviews of the contributing authors.

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